Hourly people used to have power with unions. Labor is just as important as leadership from CEOs. But with no ability to walk out and have many, many
other industries walk with you, you can't force the gains in productivity to be shared with the labor side of the equation.

So with no union no contract, no contract no union and exploitation sets in, as we are seeing. I think that was the plan when the air traffic
controllers were fired.

When Reagan fired the air traffic controllers there was a shutter through the unions, and look at pay and benefits since the Reagan pres.

Unions aren't coming back though. My industry has been trying to unionize for two decades and it's on the higher end of the pay scale, and we already
have some leverage just based on employer need (Computer Science related jobs). Unionizing is still nearly impossible.

I don't think that's the fix. In my opinion the whole problem stems from the fact that we have more qualified people than we have jobs. This makes
things an employer market. If we were to encourage people to leave the work force through other programs (more 1 income families, welfare programs
for those who don't want to work, or lowering the work week). We could increase wages simply through decreasing the labor pool. The downside is that
this results in half the population being dependent on the other half.

Great points, I can't imagine a business wanting to do any. Most won't put in day care are work, or think twice about wages that have stagnated for 35
years. Getting corps to do what eventually will have to be done will take a act of God.

originally posted by: MOMof3
That is disheartening. That is a huge wage gap and I don't know how americans can compete. Cut corporate taxes and slash wages to $3/hr. How do we
sustain our country going that direction.

You can solve it using a form of "Maximum Ratio of Wages". Implement a Maximum ratio from the Highest paid to the lowest paid employee. This removes
many other problems too. You wouldn't need unions at that point for one thing because wages would rise or fall across the board depending upon the
profits being made. You can still make as much money as possible but it wouldn't just increase for those at the top. If they want more money then
everyone below them would make more as well.

Also giving companies tax breaks wouldn't mean only those at the top benefit from it. The way it is now, by giving tax breaks only those at the top
see any difference. It basically removes outside influence from the equation. It creates a true "Trickle down" of profits by ensuring that everyone
benefits when profits are good. It also means everyone has a stake in the profits being made. Everyone gets more when they make more and everyone
gets less when profits are down. Those at the top still make more than those below them but at an acceptable ratio. Not 500 times those below
them.

Maximum wage ratios don't work, because small businesses which make up half the employers in the country don't have hugely disproportionate wages. At
a random mom and pop shop the owners might be pulling in $35/hour while their cashier is pulling in $10/hour. A ratio of 3.5. If you implement a max
wage law, you in turn say the $10/hour employee can be justifiably paid less based on what a large corporation like Walmart is doing.

Another issue with the maximum wage is that some positions don't generate a lot of revenue. Lets take a subway sandwich maker. It takes about 5
minutes to make a sandwich, which means that an employee shouldn't be expected to make more than 12 sandwiches per hour. At an average of $7 per
footlong that's $84 in revenue per hour that the employee brings in. Lets say 1/3 of that is profit. That means the employee brings in $28. How
much of that should the sandwich maker pocket? The franchise owner is only seeing maybe $1 of that from each employee, but between multiple
franchises, probably has 150 employees, so that owner makes it up through volume. The actual sandwich makers are seeing $10 of that, and the managers
probably around $5 and the rest gets reinvested.

This is one of the issues with a maximum wage, because relative to the value you're bringing to the company, the lower level the job, the higher the
percent is being taken. If you're bringing a business $28/hour and taking $10, you're already pocketing more than a third of the revenue for zero
risk. For contrast lets look at a well paying field like programming, you'll usually make about 100k in one of those jobs, but your revenue to the
company will be around 2-3 million. So you're only being paid 3-5% of what you bring in.

The maximum wage sounds good, but it just doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

originally posted by: MOMof3
That is disheartening. That is a huge wage gap and I don't know how americans can compete. Cut corporate taxes and slash wages to $3/hr. How do we
sustain our country going that direction.

Well when Joe Hammer Co stop making hammers for his neighbors and decided his goal was to put a hammer in the hand of every person in the world.......

originally posted by: seasonal
a reply to: olaru12
If you are paid to report the media you will be controlled.

We are the new media, you and I. We decide, becasue we are smart what we think is news.

This is very scary to large corps/wealthy men who own the news, and make no mistake they own the old news media.

Decentralized control of news will be the unspoken reason that we will loose a free internet.

We don't have a free internet now. We have Google. They are building a yuggggeeee data, server, base of operations here in Tamalewood.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a free and independent news source but I don't think the Corporate oligarchy will allow it.
I don't see it as being so much political as economic and I don't see the networks scared in the least.

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